SDIF is back from it’s week-long, end of the semester related break. We’re still alive. How are you?

And, don’t worry, the White House apparently has that whole mysteriously losing e-mails thing under control.

Whew!

Social Media: The next generation is reshaping politics through social networking.

Kay Steiger on Beggars Can Be Choosers’ lament on the lack of protest music in today’s climate.

Like Kay, I think BCBC’s rant is a little shortsighted. So, I’ll tack a couple of other artists onto Kay’s nice summary:

• Steve Earle keeps the old school protestin’ torch alight, for sure.
• Immortal Technique might have the most biting lyrics of them all, “cuz Condoleeza Rice is just a new age Sally Hemmings.”
• Tom Morello or Bright Eyes, maybe?
• The Rolling Stones even got in on the act as recently as 2005.
• And, uh, Pearl Jam. Duh.

Add onto this list in the comments!

Venezuela’s National Library director declares war on the Library of Congress.

While I don’t disagree with the accusation that the LOC is “sowing cultural imperialism throughout the world” (the biases codified in LOC subject headings, for example, are consistently criticized by many progressive LIS scholars), I am concerned with this move, as the article points out, in relation to the independent libraries movement in Cuba. In working with the Cuban government, Chavez and Baez could effectively kill a movement there that has already lost a great number of ambitious and heroic people.

Wonkette: Twin Cities Bars will stay open to 4 AM during the Republican National Convention.

Minneapolis being my former-former place of residence, and Ben’s current one, we’re thrilled. This is particularly good news for SDIF as we have something special in the works for the RNC mayhem…

…stay tuned as more details are revealed over the next few months!!!

Gawker on Oliver Stone’s script for W , a George W. Bush biopic he’s got in the works.

Wired reports that blogs can, indeed, be used for good or evil. A 2006 Joint Special Operations University report recommended that the Department of Defense hire (sshhh!) secret bloggers to trash talk critics and support public relations efforts.

Amusingly, the report notes that potential creators and maintainers of such blogs may require “cultural and linguistic training,” and much less amusingly, predicts that “If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.”

What should the future Word of the Year term for faux bloggers be? Does a word for them already exist?

Ars Technica: AG Mukasey says “piracy funds terrorism.” Well, sort of.

In a recent speech, Mukasey - a man with eerily deliberate tastes - doesn’t go so far as to suggest the average P2P file-sharer is totally complicit. The article provides a good overview of various government initiatives aiming to crack down on commercial piracy and, believe it or not, hacking.

Kay Steiger, blogger over at Campus Progress and one-time friend-in-real-life, on the anti-war groups suing for the right to protest the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul this year.

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Lawrence Lessig won’t be running for Congress. *Sigh*